Used leaf for High School commuter car?

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texasdiver

New member
Joined
Nov 11, 2017
Messages
4
Location
Vancouver WA
My middle daughter is 1 year out from getting her license. She is a quirky independent type who is interested in an electric car for her first car. I drive a Prius as my daily commuter car and we are thinking of looking for a used leaf for the HS kids car. This would be our first foray into electric cars.

We are 4.8 miles from the HS so her ordinary daily drive would be around 10 miles. If she drops her younger sister off at middle school that would add about 2 miles. Most afternoons she also has music lessons or does workouts at a local gym that would add another 10 miles round trip to her day. So her average weekday mileage would be about 20-25 miles give or take.

My daily commute is 23 miles 1-way and my average daily driving distance including afternoon errands and such is about 60-65 miles of mostly freeway. I'd like to get a car with at least the necessary range so that I could comfortably use it for my daily driver should we decide to swap cars or such.

We would also probably need to park the car outside in front and to the side of our garage. I would anticipate installing some sort of outdoor charging station post along side our drive way for nightly charging. It doesn't seem complicated. The meter and breaker box is on the side of the garage next to where the car would be parked.

We are in Vancouver WA (Portland metro area) so cool rainy climate much of the year without many extremes of hot or cold.

So, basically I'm looking for advice on what model years of leaf I should be targeting as I begin my research and search. Since it would be our 3rd car and a HS kids beater car I'm not looking to spend more than necessary as long as it is a safe and reliable car. Don't particularly have a budget in mind but would be happy to pay less than $10 grand.

Advice?
 
Look for a Leaf built AFTER March of 2013. The build month is on the driver's door sill sticker. You can get better deals on earlier Leafs, and they would work great for your daughter, but if you want that 50 mile range for your own use, you need a later build battery pack - or a new pack in an older Leaf. By the same token, the less expensive S model would work fine for her, but you'd want the SV with heatpump for the extra range in cool damp weather.
 
So would that mean limiting searches to model years 2014 and newer? I don’t see how to search for the build date on sites like CARFAX.

EDIT. Never mind. I see where the build date actually does show up on the CARFAX detailed reports at least for dealer listed cars that are on CARFAX. There are actually 85 leafs 2013 and newer listed on CARFAX within 200 miles of my location which I am kind of surprised by. Wasn’t expecting so many choices.
 
Carfax shows the build date, I've been told. If you can't get the build date for a 2013, you have two options: if the owner is private and seems legit, then 11 or 12 capacity bars showing likely means a later build. (Or you can just look for a '14 or '15.) Fewer than 11 bars in anything but a Hot climate and the car is likely an early build that will keep losing bars quickly. You should also assume that any '13 showing 12 bars is close to losing one, and has the range of an 11 bar Leaf.
 
I have a daily one way commute of 25 miles. I have a 12 bar 2013 leaf (late year model), with probably about 10-12 % capacity loss so far.. My drive is a mix of city/backroad (30-60mph average). I get home with about 28-38% left on my pack depending on traffic/road/weather conditions. I would imagine if I was driving closer to an average speed of 60-65MPH, I would probably end up with far less. If your errands are closer to home, you would be fine as you could estimate what you can and cant do. But, I would not take chances running a bunch of errands at my work location. I do go out and get lunch on occasion (probably about 4 miles max roundtrip away from work).

There's no real 'detour' route for me on the way home once I get on the main road, so if it closed, I would have to drive back to the town I work in and charge up, or pull over and wait it out. I normally check road conditions before I leave anyways. You need to know if you can afford to take a detour route with your range should that come into play.

That being said, I've yet to encounter a problem with my commute and my car fits 95% of my travel needs currently. When I get home, I put the car on the charger if I anticipate using it after work. After an hours worth of charge on my L2 27A charging station, it's ready for any errands I have to run.

Love my leaf and look forward to my next longer range EV in a few years.
 
This one looks good:

https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/707707215/overview/

CarFax reports shows it's a Washington State car, which is an ideal climate for the battery.

Platt Auto group seem to have a lot of Leafs, they are just south of Portland. Not an endorsement, I just know they sell a lot of used Leafs.
 
alozzy said:
This one looks good:

https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/707707215/overview/

CarFax reports shows it's a Washington State car, which is an ideal climate for the battery.

Platt Auto group seem to have a lot of Leafs, they are just south of Portland. Not an endorsement, I just know they sell a lot of used Leafs.

It also appears to have Premium Package, and has either the Charge package as well, or at least the fog lights.
 
Agreed, I'm pretty sure that for 2013 models the option package that includes DCQC also includes the LED headlights and fog lights.

@texasdiver, in case it helps you, here are some other listings within 100 miles of Vancouver, WA:

https://goo.gl/4bXGhT

Good luck!
 
Agreed, I'm pretty sure that for 2013 models the option package that includes DCQC also includes the LED headlights and fog lights.

The reason I qualified my guess is that I think you could also get just the fog lights for $150. The OP should ask how many charge ports there are, just in case.
 
I think a used LEAF is an excellent choice for a first car for a high school student. They are heavy cars so they are quite safe in accidents, there are many lease returns which keep used prices low, and the student does not need to worry about gas money (charge at home overnight). I would not recommend one for a college student without finding a reliable place for overnight charging. Your 60 to 65 mile daily need (if you drive it) on freeways will require a car with little battery deterioration (unless you can drive slower than normal freeway speed or there are reliable public charging facilities along your route). In your mild climate with high humidity, I recommend a 2013 or later SV or SL because the heat pump will use much less energy than the resistance heater for defrost (only an issue if stretching the range when you drive it for your daily commute). I strongly recommend that you get a car with backup camera because there are large blind spots when backing up (premium package surround camera system or just rear view camera is up to you).
 
If you can get the $10,000 utility incentive, couple this with the $7,500 fed tax credit and I believe there is a WA state credit around $3,000, you're looking at a $20,500 discount for a 2017 Leaf (if still available). All these incentives are after you negotiate your best price off MSRP, so conceivably you could get close to your $10,000 price for a new 30 KW Leaf.
 
My daughter loves using my '12 Leaf. Sure it's now down to 9 bars and frequently needs to be charged, it still works great for her! Never has to worry about filling the gas in sub-zero wind chills, or the constant price fluctuations of gas, just plug it in and she's set :)
She needed to make a couple hundred mile trip the other day so she had to use our Prius. She'd never had to use a gas pump so I had to give her a primer before her trip, not that she had to fill the gas but just in case of an emergency :) To her gas stations are for one thing only, to get food or drink :D
 
To the original poster... Yes, a Leaf is a great car for a High School senior and college student, even if they live away from home. My two teenage sons want my Leaf as their car because they would not have to spend any $$$$MOOLA on gas... That is a big incentive. Also, a new driver does not know anything about good car maintenance, and the Leaf is perfect because it needs none. Lastly, At that age, young drivers only go on short trips to malls, friends house, and burger king, so it is perfect as an around town vehicle.
 
Perhaps most important of all, by providing our teenagers with an EV as their first car, we'll almost guarantee that they'll choose to buy an EV when they are in their 20s too - and hopefully never even consider an ICE.

Given their reliance on mobile phones and being "connected", they should have little trouble adjusting to using PlugShare to find free public charging options in the short-term. I suspect they'll adjust a lot easier than we did, as planning in advance for charging will just become second nature and charging infrastructure will be that much more pervasive.
 
Given the low daily miles she would drive, you wouldn't even have to install an L2 EVSE. The included L1 cord should be fine, if you already have a convenient 120V outlet.

(FYI, L1 charging rate is approximately 4 mph)
 
I bought a July 2013 build car this past Memorial Day. It started out with about 18 kWh at full charge. Over the summer I was getting 5 miles per kWh easily on the worn original tires, and at that time I could easily go 60+ miles before hitting 25% SOC in careful(ish) city driving, or at constant 50-55 mph freeway driving (all fairly flat routes, but not perfectly flat).

I replaced the tires in September with new Ecopia Plus and took a 10% hit with the stiffer, heavier new tires. Still would be pretty close to workable for your commute without white knuckles.

But, in the last month as "winter" weather (Seattle winter, so you know, NOT really winter), my range has tanked due to using heat, defogging (not optional!) and lights and wind and rolling on wet road, which apparently all matters although you never notice it with an ICEV. I can basically rely on getting 3.0 miles per kWh (I just got back from a 13 mile round-trip taking the kid to a sport class for which LeafSpy said I got exactly that mileage), so now I can go just over 40 miles from a full charge to 25%, or if I wanted to keep it between 80% and 30% SOH for best battery life, that would be 27 miles per cycle. My hope is that it will be 5 or 6 years before the car drops the 9th bar (to SOH 65%) and so gets less than about 80% of these values.

So, for your kid's current needs, you are good to go, but for your commute, winters will be marginal, at best, if you can't charge at both ends (or jump on a nearby DCQC conveniently). The commute would probably be do-able in summer for a couple of years.
 
texasdiver said:
There are actually 85 leafs 2013 and newer listed on CARFAX within 200 miles of my location which I am kind of surprised by. Wasn’t expecting so many choices.
Many of those cars will have been auctioned elsewhere and shipped there, often from places that are hot enough to do lots of extra damage to the battery. Try to find a car that was sold and serviced in a cool area so you don't get a dud that is already badly degraded by hot weather. A native Portland car would be ideal.
 
GerryAZ said:
They are heavy cars so they are quite safe in accidents, .
When most of the excess weight is battery under the seats, not steel in front of you, I think that's a fallacy. The crash test data isn't too bad, but I was worried from the start about the parking brake lever poised right in front of my left shin, and the offset crash results bear that out:

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/nissan/leaf-4-door-hatchback/2014

The Leaf is no Mercedes or Volvo!
 
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